He gives a last glance into the dark.
He hears nothing and sees less.
Johnson let the door drop. It landed in place with a heavy whump.
He waited for the screams, the crying, the begging.
He heard nothing.
“Boy?” he says, hating the tremor of anxiety in his voice. “Boy!”
Johnson grimaces sourly. It wouldn’t do for the boy’s neck to be broken. Poole would not be pleased.
Then, like a miracle, he hears a shuffling sound from below, followed by the jagged sounds of a child crying.
“Keep your feet moving,” Johnson says loudly, not knowing if the brat can hear him or not. “Keep the blood flowing and you’ll be fine.” He waits for a response, gets none, and shrugs.
He begins trudging his way back toward the orphanage, praying his interrupted meal will be there waiting.
If not, there’ll be hell to pay.
7
THUMP THUMP THUMP THUMP THUMP!
Andrew stirs. The black veil of sleep rips, then pulls apart like cobwebs.
THUMP THUMP THUMP THUMP THUMP!
A man is yelling. Outside the doors. Echoing down the hall to his chamber.
Yelling?
Andrew sits up in darkness, breathing fast.
Footsteps move quickly past his door, the pulse of a held lantern ignites the space beneath, then vanishes.
Poole.
Andrew fumbles for his own bedside lantern and ignites it. He lifts his watch. Half-past three in the morning. Despite the oddness and urgency, he takes a moment to wrap his robe over his undergarment and buckle on his shoes.
He freezes a moment at his door, holding his breath, listening. The pounding has stopped. He assumes Poole has opened the door for whomever was attempting to gain entry.
There are voices now. Men’s voices.
They are heated.
Rushing, Andrew plucks the lantern from the bedside table and hurries for the door. He pulls it open, runs into the hall. Ahead, there are lights in the foyer. Bobbing lanterns held by shadows. The sound of two men, now three. Poole among them.
What’s going on?
He enters the foyer and sees that one of the large double doors is open wide. A frigid wind blows inward and covers him in chilled night air. Goosebumps riddle his exposed flesh. A large man is talking with Poole, who stands stoic in nothing but an undershirt, feet bare atop the stone floor, which Andrew knows from experience must be freezing. The older priest turns briefly when he hears Andrew approach, then turns his attention back to the man, who is pointing animatedly out the door. Pointing to something in the night.
As he gets closer, Andrew sees more men standing just outside. They appear anxious, as if waiting to be allowed entry.
They all carry guns on their hips.
“Father?” Andrew says, arriving to stand beside Poole. He speaks too loudly, trying to sound forceful instead of fearful, which is how he truly feels. He doesn’t know what’s happening, and the men don’t seem to be an immediate threat, but there’s something here he doesn’t like.
Many things he doesn’t like.
Poole ignores him for now, and Andrew strains to hear snatches of the conversation: “Help . . . lost . . . no time . . .”
“Father Poole?” Andrew says, again too loudly, his emotions less fearful now and truer to his tone. He wants to know what’s going on. Both men turn to face him. Poole’s face is alive and anxious, brewing with thought. The stranger is worry-creased, sweat-dampened and wild-eyed.
This close, Andrew recognizes him immediately.
The sheriff.
The only major township within twenty miles of the orphanage is Chester, an industrial river-town straddling the northeast coast, where the priests travel twice a year to trade agricultural stockpile for certain hard-to-get supplies and, more often than not, pick up one or two new orphans—the ones waiting in hospitals or jail cells, biding their time until they are shown what will become of their lives.
Andrew has dealt with the sheriff many times over the years, and overall thinks him a fair and Christian man. A good man. He’s never mistreated a boy in his care and has worked hard over the years to help find placement for those he could, whether it be in workhouses or homes.
“Sheriff Baker,” Andrew says, putting out his hand.
“Father,” the sheriff says, gripping Andrew’s hand firmly. His skin is ice cold and rough as bark. “I’m sorry about all this. As I was telling Father Poole, I’ve got nowhere else to go.”
Poole turns to Andrew, almost distractedly. “He has a sick prisoner, one who needs immediate care.”
Andrew turns from Poole to the sheriff with a look of surprise. “We are not a hospital, Sheriff. We have few supplies and no medical personnel, as you must know,” he says, not unkindly. “Certainly Chester . . .”
“He’ll die long ’fore we get there,” Baker says, his fingers anxiously working the brim of his hat that he removed upon entering. “I’d say he’s got minutes to live, not hours, and it’s a three-hour ride to town. My next stop would be the Hill farm, but I don’t even know if he’d make it that far, and John doesn’t have any experience . . . well, with this kind of thing.”
Poole nods sagaciously, his eyes bright now, alert.
Andrew feels there’s something happening here other than a sick man, something being held back from him. He’s well aware of Poole’s time as a young hospital steward during the war, having heard countless retellings of battlefield horrors, terrifying deaths. Poole has done his share of surgery on dire men, but it was the priesthood—not the world of medicine or the field of battle—which called him home once the war ended. Andrew doesn’t know what ails the man the sheriff spoke of, but he must be desperate indeed to call upon a priest who last practiced medicine forty years in the past.
But he also has the feeling it’s not just medical treatment—not exactly—that the sheriff is referring to.
What is this man bringing to our door? Andrew thinks worriedly, but his thoughts are interrupted by an urgent-sounding Poole.
“Start at the beginning for Andrew, Sheriff. I must put on a garment.”
“Father, we don’t have much time,” the sheriff says as Poole shuffles away into the dark.
He does not stop, but only throws up a hand, his voice vacuous in the large room. “Then speak quickly! I’ll be no good to you frozen.”
Andrew rests a hand on Baker’s arm, hoping to calm the man. He only now notices how fervent he appears—his constantly-shifting eyes, the sweat running from his beaded brow, the hunched posture of someone being beaten, or hunted. Andrew forces himself to speak calmly, soothingly. “Just tell me what happened, Sheriff. Speak generally, if you must.”
The Sheriff sighs, eyes downcast, and Andrew once more notices the men standing past the open doorway beyond him, frowning and shuffling their feet like fearful children. They’re as skittish as the sheriff, he thinks. And is that mud that spatters their faces, or blood?
“We’ve come from the hills. From the forest,” Baker begins, drawing Andrew’s attention back to him. “Full bore the whole way back, but now the horses are run out and, as I said, we have a dying man in our care.”
Andrew nods for the sheriff to continue.
“Well, we went out there in the late evening looking for a young girl who’d been taken from a home just outside town.” Baker looks up, and Andrew is shocked to see tears in the grizzled man’s eyes. “She was only three years old, Father.”